Dubai Electricity and Water Authority has cut the turnaround time for bank guarantee transactions by 95 per cent through its Smart Bank Guarantee System, while reducing dependence on physical guarantees by 74 per cent.The digital system processes about 2,500 bank guarantees each year with a combined value of around Dh1 billion, according to figures announced by DEWA managing director and chief executive Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer.
The platform manages the full lifecycle of a bank guarantee through integrated digital processes, covering receipt, review, updates and follow-up. DEWA said it has replaced paper-based procedures and manual tracking with an electronic environment that allows transactions and data changes to be tracked in real time.
Automated processing and verification are central to the system. Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, is used for validation, while SWIFT authentication and digital audit trails linked to SAP provide additional layers of verification, record-keeping and financial control.
The changes are intended to improve data quality and governance as well as shorten the time required to handle guarantees. They also reduce repetitive administrative work that previously required manual intervention, allowing employees to devote more time to other tasks.
Al Tayer said DEWA was using digital technologies and artificial intelligence to redesign organisational operations and improve efficiency, as part of Dubai’s drive to expand digital government services. The authority is developing what he described as an AI-driven integrated operational model aimed at improving operational efficiency and sustainability while supporting the emirate’s zero-bureaucracy programme.
He said the Smart Bank Guarantee System had made guarantee management faster, more accurate and more resilient, while improving the use of resources and workforce productivity. The project also forms part of DEWA’s wider deployment of RPA to automate repetitive processes and remove routine work.
Bank guarantees are used across government transactions as commitments from banks to meet financial obligations if customers or contractors fail to do so. At DEWA, guarantees are required in some business processes, including certain electricity connection arrangements, making accurate verification and tracking important to financial administration.
The 95 per cent reduction in turnaround time is the measurable result disclosed by DEWA from its programme to automate high-volume administrative and customer processes. The authority has also been applying artificial intelligence and automation to payment reconciliation, supply activation and the handling of technical notifications.
DEWA said in September that agentic artificial intelligence had been incorporated into 76 per cent of its services. Among the changes disclosed at the time, the daily payment-reconciliation cycle, supporting 13 services and roughly 13.3 million transactions a year, had fallen from about four hours to 12 minutes, also representing a 95 per cent improvement in processing time.
For electricity and water supply activation, which handles approximately 210,000 transactions annually, DEWA said customer inputs had been reduced from 10 to three and the number of journey steps from nine to three. Completion time fell from around eight minutes to two minutes, making the process 75 per cent faster.
The bank guarantee platform differs from those customer-facing applications because it centres on financial administration and control. Its combination of RPA validation, SWIFT authentication and SAP-linked audit records is designed to maintain traceability as paper documents and manual tracking are reduced.
SWIFT provides a standardised financial messaging network used by banks and other financial institutions, while SAP systems are widely used to manage enterprise financial records and workflows. Linking authentication and audit trails to automated processing allows guarantee information to be checked and recorded within the digital workflow rather than passed between separate manual stages.
DEWA has not disclosed the previous average processing time in minutes or hours, nor provided a monetary estimate of savings generated by the 95 per cent reduction. Its announcement instead measures the improvement as a percentage of transaction turnaround time and the decline in physical documentation.
The Smart Bank Guarantee System has received a five-star rating at the International Best Practice Competition, an external benchmarking programme recognising organisational practices.
Topics
UAE